The cost of living is rising higher and higher.
Associations of capitalists are steadily raising prices, raking in
millions and tens of millions, while the mass of the
peasantry fall into greater and greater ruin and workers’
families find it ever more difficult to make both ends meet,
and have to go hungry and deny themselves the barest
necessities.

The organ of our industrial millionaires, Promyshlennost
i
Torgovlya,[1] gives the following data about the rising
cost of living. The so-called price index, which is obtained
by combining the prices of a specified number of major
foodstuffs, has been rising steadily over the past few years.
Here are the figures for April:

In the last six years, prices have risen from 2,195 to
2,729, i.e., by fully 24 per cent! There is remarkable
“progress” in the fleecing of the mass of the working
people, and particularly of the workers, by the capitalist
combines.

But the capitalists—both in the journal quoted and
in their innumerable societies and associations, graciously
authorised by the government—continue to complain of
the “unfair” taxation of trade and industry!

The poor and unfortunate industrial millionaires
publish the following data given in a ministerial document
on the taxation of urban real estate.

In 1910, the income from such property was assessed
at 239 million rubles (of course, it was assessed
bureaucratically, by officials, and one can imagine how many tens
of millions were concealed by the oh-so-poor merchant
class). In 1912, i.e., only two years later, the income on
urban real estate was assessed at 500 million rubles (
counting only Russia, without the Kingdom of Poland).

And so, in two years, the net income on urban real estate
rose by more than 250 million rubles! This gives an idea
of the stream of gold pouring into the pockets of the
capitalists, coming in millions of trickles from incredible
want, poverty and hunger among the peasants and workers.

“The high cost of living today” is nothing but the
present-day (capitalist) form of impoverishment, ruin and plunder
of the working people alongside the unprecedented
enrichment of a handful of capitalists.

Pity the poor capitalists who complain of patently
“unfair” taxation. Just think: they have to give up 6 per
cent of their net income. In 1910, they had to give up (in
Russia without Poland) 14 million rubles, and in 1912,
29.8 million rubles.

And so in two years the increase in tax on the robbed
millionaires amounted to nearly 16 million rubles.

What do you think, worker comrades: when net income
goes up from 240 to 500 millions, i.e., by 260 million rubles
in two years, should not a tax of a hundred or two hundred
million rubles have been collected? Should they not have
taken from the additional profit of 260 million rubles,
made on the workers and poor peasants, two hundred
millions, at a modest valuation, for schools and hospitals,
to aid the hungry and provide for workers’ insurance?

Notes

[1]Promyshlennost i Torgovlya (Industry and Commerce)—an
organ of the council of congresses of industrial and commercial
representatives. It was a mouthpiece of Big Business and Big
Industry and was published in St. Petersburg from January 1908
to December 1917.